"Charlie Menocal hasn't said anything about it lately."
"Knowing Charlie, I'm amazed," he commented.
Ruth resumed her seat and proceeded to toast her toes anew. Her glances from time to time were directed at Lee's countenance somewhat speculatively. Several times she smoothed her dress with slow attention. Lee continued his deliberate smoking.
"Well, it's a great comfort to know that you're well and that everything is proceeding so brightly," she stated, at length. "You must take time to run down and see me, now that I'm back. I'm not going to be satisfied with anything less than almost every evening with you. Bring along one of those nice engineer boys for Imogene while we talk."
Lee gave a shake of his head.
"Don't count on me," he said. "We're doing night work as well as day. We're near the end. Have to push the job. Little time to spare." He jerked the phrases forth shortly, one after another.
"Do try to come once in a while, though," she responded, gazing about the room in a way that gave her speech a perfunctory character. That, at any rate, was the impression made upon Lee; and he continued to puzzle his brain as to what underlay it all—what motive, what object. At the same time he was sickened by the suave interest she pretended, by her shallow insincerity. "I've wondered if I could be of any help here to you," she went on. But a sharp movement on his part caused her to say, "Still, I know a man doesn't like a girl messing up his work. That's one reason I've been careful not to propose it before, or even to make the demands on your time that some girls would have made. I'll be glad when the project is out of the way; then we can begin to plan for ourselves." She cast her eyes upward at space. "There are lots of things to decide—where to live, and so on. You come soon and we'll set some of them down on paper for consideration."
Lee could not escape that feeling of perfunctoriness in her twitter of talk. It went no further than that, however; he had no chagrin or repugnance or anger at the thin duplicity, not even at her complacent confidence in his stupidity and infatuation. For to count on his being blind to the past and deluded by her words, she could only believe him both stupid and infatuated. He was quite calm. His actual state of mind was, more than anything else, one of detachment. He imagined that he had come to a point where she was incapable of arousing in him any kind of sentiment or passion.
Presently she took up her furs and walked humming about the office as she adjusted them.
"I'd like to stay all day, but must be going," she said. "Imo and I were wondering, by the way, if you could send us a man with some tar-paper to line our cabins."